Tom Shales Rips Michael Powell and the FCC

[curtoid]

From today's Washington Post:

The FCC Chairman Has No Clothes (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62718-2004Nov19.html)

Pompous and imperious, an ideologue who believes unfailingly in his own philosophy of how TV and radio should work (the FCC also has domain over telephone and emerging broadband technologies), Powell ignores or condemns anyone who opposes him. Though FCC chairmen have labored mostly in obscurity, Powell has managed to make himself famous; he's the Torquemada of the insane campaign now being waged against "obscenity" on the airwaves.

Some people scoff. After all, it's widely assumed that the FCC's new passion for fining stations and networks will be swept aside by the courts, once it gets to them, for the audaciously unconstitutional assault on the First Amendment that it is. But, one skeptic points out, the Bush administration will be naming new judges to old courts. Bush has been known to sneak in judicial appointments in the middle of the night, literally.

Too little too late?



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v64/curtoid/awesome.jpg
Still Waiting For My $100... (http://www.ronfez.net/messageboard/viewmessages.cfm/Forum/46/Topic/38183/page/Ron___Fez_moving_to_Orlando_.htm)

[A.J.]

Oh my God....Stern was right!

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A Skidmark/canofsoup15 production.

Red Sox Nation

[FMJeff]

canu give us a login so we an read the entire article?

<center><img src="http://thereisnogod.faithweb.com/images/fmjeff.gif">
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It made my heart sing.

[curtoid]

Shales is going to be on Ron and Fez during the second segment of tonight's show.

canu give us a login so we an read the entire article?

I have personal info on there, since I used washingtonpost.com's job bank and other things...here's the complete article...

**********

Oops. They got rid of the wrong Powell. The father unfortunately is going, but the son, even more unfortunately, remains behind.

Colin Powell, as most Americans know, has "resigned" his position as secretary of state, though few in the inner circle of the coldhearted Bush administration will likely be shedding tears at his departure. Staying in office, however, and capable of wreaking havoc in American broadcasting until 2007, is Colin's son Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and definitely not a force for good in America.

Pompous and imperious, an ideologue who believes unfailingly in his own philosophy of how TV and radio should work (the FCC also has domain over telephone and emerging broadband technologies), Powell ignores or condemns anyone who opposes him. Though FCC chairmen have labored mostly in obscurity, Powell has managed to make himself famous; he's the Torquemada of the insane campaign now being waged against "obscenity" on the airwaves.

There was according to legend a face that launched a thousand ships. This is about a nipple that inflamed a thousand nut cases. Janet Jackson's brief breast exposure during halftime of this year's Super Bowl has led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, a wave of hypocritical hysteria with which Democrats as well as Republicans are only too happy to be associated, and a state of affairs that boils down to open season on the First Amendment, the bedrock of the Bill of Rights.

At no point did anyone, including Chairman Powell, positioned now like Attila at the head of the Huns, produce one single living creature -- man, woman, child, toddler, infant, newborn, late-term fetus, dog, cat, rooster, horse or parakeet -- who saw the briefly exposed nipple and was in any tangible way harmed by it. Like most of the halftime entertainment, it was tastelessly inappropriate, but the ensuing mass fuss is a farce that has made America an international laughingstock again.

Tired as the topic is, one must mention the nipple when recounting what might be called the Sins of Michael Powell, since it's a highlight of his bumpy, disgraceful tenure as FCC chairman. The furor it generated resulted not only in a $550,000 fine to be paid by CBS, which aired the Super Bowl (and is owned by Viacom, whose MTV produced the halftime show), but in more and more punishments meted out over more and more alleged infractions, many involving naughty words that had previously been uttered without incident (no cases of shock reported in trauma units, for instance, and no outbreaks of rioting in the streets).

One result is to make Howard Stern, however improbably, a national hero. After two decades on the radio doing material of a certain nature that every American was free to avoid, Stern found himself under all-out attack from the FCC, which started fining stations and station groups for carrying his program. The two met electronically recently when Stern got through to a San Francisco call-in show on which Powell was a guest and they exchanged insults.

In fairness to Powell, the commission's two Democratic members, Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein, have been among those pushing for not only fines but license revocations when stations violate the still-vague obscenity rules. They are idiots.

And the networks are hardly just angelic victims. In this increasingly hysterical climate, ABC was spectacularly stupid in beginning last Monday's NFL telecast with a raunchy scene set in a locker room and featuring a fully dressed player being seduced by a woman in a towel. She dropped the towel and jumped naked into his arms. Powell then jumped into the spotlight and by Wednesday was pontificating about the episode on CNBC: "I wonder if Walt Disney w

[curtoid]

Tom Shales Year End Recap... (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24388-2004Dec24.html)

The man is on a crusade this year; very little about content of television, and more on the "slippery slope"

But there were larger and more portentous slopes to worry about. Still haunted by the long twin shadows of 9/11, Americans showed increased willingness to tolerate limits placed on First Amendment freedoms, especially if they appeared even remotely related to national security. Freedom of speech and of the press seemed less absolute, more malleable; less sacred, more negotiable.

It became clearer than ever in 2004 that political conservatives have in their wily way managed to get a secure grip on the electronic media, and some of their actions were blatant attempts to advance a political agenda. Among the prime offenders was the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which early in the year forbade the ABC affiliates it owns to air a special edition of the ABC News production "Nightline" on the grounds, ironically, that it was political propaganda cleverly disguised as journalism and public service.

It was a good year for bad news, a bad year for good news, and a bad year for the news business. But as the year wound down, the Bush administration, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and all their talkative conservative supporters got a surprise of their own. The troops themselves were heard from, and their complaint was not a lack of support from the media but rather from their own leaders. A young soldier stood up at a Rumsfeld appearance in Iraq to complain about the crucial lack of armor for Humvees and other vehicles that are repeatedly targeted by Iraqi insurgents and fanatics.

The media conglomerates omnivorously devour one another and seem to become one great mass -- a ruling elite that can be thought of as a virtual second government. With the White House and Congress controlled by the same political forces that own the media, the possibilities for disseminating damaging or potentially unpopular truth get fewer, and the opportunities for spreading disinformation disguised as news grow.

I don't believe it's in the file library, but if you can find a copy of Shales on R&F from the 11/22 show (I believe), it's worth listening - it's an interesting discussion. They reran it last week during "Best Of."

Also, during that same segment, after Shales is off the phone, was when Ron & Fez talked pretty candidly about Satellite Radio - a discussion I've referenced before.